1. Field
The present invention relates to method and system for providing an online shopping search service.
2. Background
As the Internet is widely distributed, now product sellers can construct an online virtual market, which is an online shopping mall. Also, Internet users can purchase any particular product or goods through the virtual market without visiting stores in person. Thanks to the appearance of such online shopping mall, now, users can save time and money by direct purchase plans, such as personal visit, an advance order, and the like. A lot of users use online shopping malls because of the above advantages. Thus, various online shopping malls are entering into the virtual market.
However, an Internet shopping mall is being operated in such a manner that products are supplied by product suppliers and the products are directly sold to purchasers. In this type of internet shopping malls, there is a problem that product suppliers have to make efforts to open a store by individually contacting with a plurality of Internet shopping malls. Also, there is another problem that an operator of the Internet shopping mall has to take trouble since procedures of determining a product to sell at the Internet shopping mall and making a contract with a product supplier who supplies the product are not coordinated.
In order to solve the aforementioned problems, Korean Patent Application No 10-2001-0074164 (Publication Number 2003-0043144) discloses a unified merchandising system using Internet, which can connect a supplier supplying products with an Internet shopping mall selling the products.
The merchandising system comprises a plurality of supplier servers, a plurality of shopping mall servers, “a merchandising server”, a purchaser terminal and a financial server. The supplier servers provide product information via the Internet. The shopping mall servers display the product information on a web page having a sale channel via the Internet. “The merchandising server” is constructed via the Internet between the plurality of supplier servers and the plurality of shopping mall servers and connects the supplier servers to the shopping mall servers. The purchaser terminal transmits purchase and payment information to the shopping mall servers in order to enable a user to purchase a product corresponding to product information displayed at the plurality of shopping mall servers. The financial server, connected to the purchaser terminal, the shopping mall servers, the merchandising server and the supplier servers through the Internet, performs a payment procedure.
Even in case of using the merchandising system, certain problems in the Internet shopping mall service still remain. That is, i) the operator of the Internet shopping mall has to fully review each product information provided from the merchandising server, make a request for opening a store and receive authentication. ii) Although a plurality of shopping mall servers and a plurality of supplier servers are connected to the merchandising server, a user who wants to purchase a product cannot be provided with a web search service for each product being sold at the shopping mall. iii) It is impossible to provide the product supplier or the operator of the Internet shopping mall with a statistical service about a current sales state of one or more products registered by a plurality of product suppliers or that of a product at the shopping mall server which is opened via the merchandising server. iv) A procedure of processing product information into data recorded in the product database has to be fully performed on a side managing the merchandising server, in which the product information is provided by each of product suppliers. v) Even in case that the operator of the Internet shopping mall selects a product to sell, the procedure of manufacturing a web page for sales of products has to be performed by the operator.
Also, there may be a method of charging a shopping mall operator who has opened a store at a web site, based on a fixed cost or the number of products registered by the shopping mall operator. The web site is operated by an online shopping search service server. Thus, the shopping mall operator has to pay money despite of whether a registered product is actually exposed to a user, if exposed, the number of exposures, or the number of selections from the user with respect to the registered product, for example, the number of clicks, or the like. According to such charging method, although shopping mall operators pay the same amount of money, there is a problem that unbalance between shopping mall operators having a big opening effect and shopping mall operators having a small opening effect. Also, there is another problem that an online shopping search service operator cannot make a profit since he/she cannot further charge the shopping mall operator having a bigger opening effect.
Thus, there is required the advent of new technology, constructing a regular and integrative database with respect to products registered by a plurality of product registrants, readily providing a web search service to a plurality of users who have accessed an online shopping search service server with respect to products registered by a plurality of product registrants or a plurality of sellers, and employing a reasonable charging method.
The foregoing discussion is to provide a background information and does not constitute an admission of prior art.